Yelp Will Let Your Customers Message You

For small businesses, including those with a brick and mortar presence, handling customer feedback is getting to be a 24 hour, 7 day a week job.

Looking at sites like Yelp alone, you have regular customer reviews good and bad to monitor and respond to. There’s also the opportunity for customers to upload photos, (and more recently even Yelp video of your business.)

The site already gives address and contact information, including a phone number, in most cases. But in keeping with the times, the Yelp team has decided to add yet another feature – instant messaging.

As Yelp Product Manager Ely Lerner explains via the Yelp Official Blog:

“With more than 57 million local reviews contributed across 27 countries, there's already a boatload of info people can gather through Yelp on any local business they're thinking about trying. Not to mention helpful photos (and soon videos!) and attributes, like phone number, hours and Fido-friendliness. But we realize there are times when a very specific question might not be easily answered with a quick look at a business listing (and you don't always feel like picking up the phone to inquire about).”

From the business owners perspective, messages will come via email and can be responded to the same way without even opening your business owner account.

From the customer’s perspective, they will hit the “message the business owner” button on your business’s page and be given an estimated response time. (The implication here is that swift responses are a good idea, and Yelp seems to have made it pretty easy to do so.)

Of course, you can view this as just another aspect of customer service, but Yelp seems to also view the new feature as an opportunity to gain new leads.

It’s expected, after all, that inquiries about your products or services may often come from those about to make a purchasing decision (or just trying to find a really great place to have dinner with friends tonight.)

Wade Lombard owner of Square Cow Movers from Austin, TX, adds:

"This feature is a conversation starter. Responding takes just a few minutes and it almost always leads to further correspondence or a phone conversation. We believe that responding quickly helps to show the client we deeply care about winning their business."

Oh, one more thing. Yelp does give you the option to disable this new feature. But you’ll have to decide whether doing so is sending the right message to your customers.

Images: Yelp

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Google's Nest to buy Dropcam for $555 million: report

(Reuters) - Google Inc's Nest Labs will buy home-monitoring camera startup Dropcam for about $555 million in cash, technology blog Re/code reported on Friday, taking another step deeper into consumers' homes.

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Free TalkBoard App for White Board Collaboration: Video Interview with Chris Duncan of Citrix

In my quest to discover new tech tools for small business owners, I recently bumped into an app called TalkBoard. To get more information, I spent a few minutes talking with Chris Duncan, Senior Project Manager at Citrix Online. Chris was happy to explain what the app is and how it can help small business owners.

TalkBoard is a free white board app that allows for real time collaboration among team members. Simple in design, the app is literally a white rectangular board – and it's up to you to take it from there, as you draw out your ideas and work with colleagues to develop a winning solution.

The TalkBoard app is designed to improve collaboration in a number of ways:

• The advanced drawing algorithm allows even non-creative types the chance to contribute quality designs
• The app can be used to sketch out diagrams, website ideas, and projects
• Anyone who is a member of the project board can access the board and get real-time updates as team members contribute ideas and edit the board
• Add as many members as you want to a project board, and they can contribute no matter where they are

Also, TalkBoard will soon be launching a voice chat feature so you can also speak to your team as your ideas are sketched out.

To learn more about TalkBoard, watch the video below or click here to watch the video on YouTube.

As you can see, TalkBoard has many small business applications – but it's a fun app to use in your personal life as well. How do you see yourself using the TalkBoard app?

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Send Money Without a Dwolla Account With New Dwolla Direct

First, Dwolla simplified the B2B payment process. Instead of the nearly 3% transaction fee charged by some digital transaction services, Dwolla charges just one fee. Most transactions are 25 cents. (And transactions of less than $10 are free.)

Now the company says it’s trying to eliminate the barriers preventing your customers from being able to easily pay you this way.

Dwolla Direct is designed specifically to give customers an easy way to pay merchants, even if they’ve never used Dwolla before. So it might be an easy way to do anything from paying the landlord to paying for a health club membership.

Anne Driscoll, Vice President of Marketing, explains to Small Business Trends:

“We’ve made Dwolla Direct really simple by letting people make payments from your bank account without even needing a Dwolla account. What we're actually doing is to give them the best of both worlds."

The company claims the process is safer than writing a check. Since Dwolla can see both ends of the process, the company can alert you about problems ahead of time instead of waiting for that check to bounce, says Driscoll.

The company also claims it’s more secure. All that’s required is a pass code and an email. A customer’s personal financial information remains with their bank.

To use Dwolla Direct, Driscoll says you simply enter an email address and pick a password. You then read the Dwolla terms of service and select your bank from the list Dwolla provides.

So Dwolla Direct takes less time than signing up for a regular Dwolla account. For businesses, there may be more reason to take that time. They can use the platform regularly for simultaneous payments to large numbers of freelancers or employees. Dwolla can also make it less costly to make payments between suppliers, clients, consultants and partners.

Fees remain at 25 cents per transaction for payments over $10, says Driscoll. That’s even though customers haven’t signed up for a regular account and are making payments directly from their bank accounts. So these are benefits a business can use when encouraging customers to try the new payment option.

As the digital transaction space heats up there are more and more digital payment tools vying for attention. Dwolla is an example of a low cost service small business owners may want to keep their eyes on.

Images: Dwolla

The post Send Money Without a Dwolla Account With New Dwolla Direct appeared first on Small Business Trends.

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What’s The Secret Behind Entrepreneurs Creating the World’s First Soda Can Watch?

The Can Watch S is a unique approach to recycling. Instead of treating old soda cans as junk, these entrepreneurs have used them to create a watch that actually functions as a fashion accessory.

Alchemist Designs, the company behind the watch, is trying to raise $20,000 on Kickstarter to put it into production. The company wants to create a handcrafted product that will sell at a premium price (retail of about $136) and give jobs to underprivileged workers as well.

Alchemist Designs partners with Hong Kong sheltered workshop Christian Family Service Centre to provide well-paid opportunities for underprivileged workers in the area to build the watches. The goal is to keep the materials sustainable and also to provide some sustainability to the local economy as well. Though the two goals are measured separately, they stem from the same basic values.

In an email interview with Small Business Trends, Kat Ling, Creative Director at Alchemist Creations explained:

"All our works follow a simple motto, “Turn Neglect Into Shine.” We’d like to turn something which has its own specialty and character but is being neglected by the others, into something that we treasure."

But the company's first priority has to be the quality and design of its products. The initial concept came from the desire to mix sustainability and practicality. In 2012, the Alchemist Designs team began noticing more and more art pieces utilizing soda cans as a main material. But they had a difficult time coming up with a way to integrate the material into a mass quantity manufacturing process.

After some research, the team found that the bottom of the cans could be processed easily and could translate well into wristwatch dials.

The team collected soda cans daily and made hundreds of different prototypes to find a design that works. The cans still need to be hand picked, but Alchemist Designs eventually came up with a process and simplistic design that they hope will change the way people see design and sustainability.

Said Ling:

"We think from the basic and design from the basic. We take readily available materials and we maximize the possibilities and make them design features."

Photos: Kickstarter

The post What’s The Secret Behind Entrepreneurs Creating the World’s First Soda Can Watch? appeared first on Small Business Trends.

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Are You Now Ready to Put “Profit First?”

If you're the gentle, sensitive sort who takes yourself and your business seriously – don't read this review, don't read this book, just go off and do something else.  You won't like what you read here and you won't like Mike. You will think the book I'm reviewing is doggie doo. You should just save yourself some brain space and go off living your life and running your business as it is.

But don't let me or anyone else ever hear you complaining about your business not making money, or the fact that you're working too much, too hard and you have no money to enjoy the three minutes of free time you've scrounged together to take a bathroom break.

Are They Gone?  Good.

Now that I'm speaking to the audience that's ready to hear this, let me get to it.  Don't let the title fool you; Profit First: A Simple System to Transform Any Business From a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Micbalowicz (@MikeMichalowicz) sounds a little "get-rich-quick-y," but it's not.  This is a book so well written and targeted to YOU – that you will think Mike's been hiding under your desk.

Those overly-serious folks think that this kind of stuff is too vapid for them.  Why don't we just let them do their thing? Then those of us who aren't ashamed to face our financial demons will move forward with our thing.  Today, this includes getting yourself a copy of Profit First.

"Do I Have To?"  YES!

If your business isn't making money….wait, that's not right.  If YOU don't have enough money to live the life you set out to live when you started this business, then guess what?  You don't have a business.

Oh, so you want to have a business? Then you'll need to start making money and Profit First will show you how.  Even those of you who can't stomach the thought of dealing with finance will find yourself saying things like, "I can do that."  And before you know it, you will start seeing those dollars in your bank account rising.

How Does This Stupid System Work?

Sorry Mike, but I'm calling it a stupid system because it's so crazy, stupid easy, that even I can do it – and that is saying a lot.  Let me explain.

Just like in The Pumpkin Plan, Mike gets an epiphany from a seemingly unrelated incident.  He's watching late night infomercials or something and suddenly realizes the connection between a healthy and fit lifestyle and a healthy and fit business.

Not one to let a great metaphor go to waste, he starts exploring the idea further.  The Profit First system is set up using four key principles in eating right and living a healthy lifestyle:

1. Small Plates:  The idea here is to work with your innate need to finish everything on your plate.  The solution is to reduce the size of the plate, thereby reducing the size of your portion.  Translated to your business, when money comes into your business, immediately send portions of it out to the following accounts – profit, tax, salary, operating expenses.
2. Serve sequentially:  When eating your smaller portions, start with the vegetables first, it fills you up with good stuff.  Now, to the business side.  When dispersing the money that comes into your business across those accounts, pay profit first.
3. Remove temptation: You know about this one, get rid of the cookies, the junk food and any temptation that will take you off track from your healthy eating.  In your business, get that profit account out of easy reach.  Move it to a different bank, automate the deposits, don't look at it and just make it hard to steal from yourself.
4. Enforce a rhythm:  Don't eat when you're hungry.  The idea is to munch a few calories every couple hours.  The same holds true for your business, don't pay bills when you have money, pay them regularly (he recommends the 10th and 25th of the month).

It's So Easy, Even I Can Do It

Okay, you twisted my arm. Let me give you another example of why this goes on my desk as the book that will motivate me to be the master of my business.

It's called the "in just one more day" technique that Mike learned from one of his friends.  Here's how it works:

Whenever you see something you want to buy for your business, just say, "In just one more day" to yourself and move on.  Keep doing this until you just can't live another day without this purchase.

If you haven't guessed it, this is working on the standard profit equation income – expenses = profit.  But instead of denying yourself something because you "can't afford it," you're simply postponing it until your business absolutely needs it.

This isn't applicable to everything. But you and I both know that we have a tendency to think we need something when our business will do perfectly well without it.

Why You Will Like Mike

It's not surprising that Mike knows how your business is going – he's got a lot of experience in starting from scratch, toughing it out bootstrapping, succeeding massively, failing profoundly, having the "come-to-Jesus" moments with his wife and family, getting back up, learning from his mistakes – and living to write about it.

As many of you may already know, I'm a friend of Mike Michalowicz (remember, he's the author of Toilet Paper Entrepreneur and The Pumpkin Plan).  I'd like to say that "I knew him when" because I have known him since about 2008 or so.  Wow, that's a long time.

What can I tell you? We're professional friends and I've been gratefully receiving early copies of his books since – well, since he wrote Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.

Should We Let the Others In On It?

I'm not one to force anyone into reading anything.  I always like to say that each book has its perfect audience.  Like I said at the start of this review, this isn't for everyone.  Some people are just too uptight to appreciate the kind of advice that's in this book.

I'm also sure that a few financial or accounting experts would think of some way to find fault with the advice that's in this book. But if you've been secretly disappointed in yourself and telling yourself that you've got to get control of your business finances, then this is for you.

Maybe you've been working like a dog, investing in your business and then getting sort of sick when you look at your bank account or P&L. You'll want to read this book then.

Finally, if you've been committed to spending more time living the life you set out to live when you started this business, but have been a slave to it instead – because of your financial performance – then you can't afford to miss out on what Michalowicz offers.

The post Are You Now Ready to Put “Profit First?” appeared first on Small Business Trends.

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